Transcriber: Binh Tran Reviewer: Esra Çakmak
You walk into an art gallery.
How many male nudes do you see?
How many passive male nudes do you see?
John Badejo observes, men look at women.
Women watch themselves being looked at,
highlighting the difference between how genders see themselves and each other.
And entrapment women can feel in their minds to the eternal male gaze.
Throughout history, men have looked at women
and men have painted women to be seen by other men
yet who are married to these men and who are their daughters.
Until recent times, women have only ever seen themselves through the eyes of a man,
and men have only ever seen us
as a means to pander to their gaze and their desires.
I'm going to discuss how women have been represented,
through the microcosm of Botticelli’s sister paintings,
birth of Venus and Primavera.
Firstly, birth of Venus,
the story of Venus is that she was made from a man and the sea
ignoring female sexuality altogether.
However, there is the argument that
the sea is an entirely feminine force since it comes from nature.
This is the stance Botticelli takes.
We see Venus arrive fully formed on a clam,
which is a euphemism for the female reproductive organs.
However, if I try to stand in the same pose as Venus,
I realize it's impossible I'm going to fall over.
It's a body that can never be.
This is because female nudes throughout history have been just to be looked at.
They’re not bodies to be celebrated as bodies that eat, talk, play.
They are simply to be seen.
Nowadays, we still have this, but we do it to ourselves.
We photoshop and edit photos to become bodies that cannot be
just to pander to the male gaze
and the patriarchal beauty standards we have in society.
However, looking at Primavera, we have a very different side of Venus.
We see she is copping her belly
and above her, the trees part form of halo,
which is symbolic of the Virgin Mary.
Immediately, we see her as a maternal figure, not an essential one.
This is emphasized by his efforts chasing Klaus,
who turns into Flora as we see the flowers coming out of her mouth.
And interestingly, there are five hundred different species of plant in the foliage,
so we really have this huge celebration of fertility,
of life, of maternity.
However, we still have the three graces.
These are very popular in the Roman times with sculptors,
because they allow them to show each part of the woman's body.
So we still have all necessary eye candy for the 15th century.
However, comparing these two pictures,
they are very reminiscent of the Madonna Whore Dichotomy coined by Freud.
This essentially states that men love the Madonna,
but they desire the whore,
and I chose these two pictures because they are each extreme.
We have Venus as the Virgin Mary, the ultimate Madonna,
but we also have Venus as herself,
the goddess of love, of sexuality, of sensuality.
Feminist theory states that this complex was sort of came about
because men got scared of women’s sexual prowess during the second wave.
However, we can already see this far before in the 15th century.
Interestingly, in a study of 108 heterosexual men,
they found that those men had thinking affiliated with this dichotomy
had far worse relationships with women.
So not only is it harmful for women to see ourselves like this,
it also impacts men.
I suppose what I’ve been trying to say is that we need more women artists.
We need that art to be shown
because we also have eyes and we have minds.
And it’s important that we see ourselves as people,
as beings, as complex rather than simple objects to be looked at.
Thank you.